by Mike Stavlund
Gospel Reading: John 11:1-45
For Sunday, Apr. 10, 2011: Year A - Lent 5
I've always been a Matthew Man. My beloved Gospel writer is practical and straightforward. Slightly metaphorical, with some Messianic overtones. More leisurely than Mark, and without all the clinical rigor from Dr. Luke. But John is just too much. Too "spiritual" (whatever that means, and whatever that helps).
I imagine John's Jesus with perfectly blow-dried and coiffed hair, moving about with his feet barely touching the ground and with stilted characters standing around him. It reads like a bad high school play, with the lead actor staring at the lights and all of the supporting actors delivering their lines as mini-monologues. In this week’s passage, even Jesus is enacting obfuscation with euphemisms, and then delivering stage-whispers to God: "I'm only saying this so they'll hear me, Father."
High-eyebrowed Expectation
Had I never read this before, I wonder if the conclusion would be as obvious as it is to me now. Everyone is leaning toward Jesus, offering pedantic dialogue about ephemeral matters, hoping for all their breath that John will write their words down on his scroll for posterity. Allusions, foreshadowing, and high-eyebrowed expectation that Jesus is about to do the impossible.
And it's so circuitous − so long! The words stretch down the page, and yet the conclusion is quite abrupt. Lazarus finally comes out, and everyone gives everyone else a high-five. Everyone, that is, except the stunned Lazarus. We don’t hear anything else from him.
What About Poor Lazarus?
What about Lazarus? What if Lazarus was ready to be done with life? What if he was just tired of it all? What if he found whatever is on the other side to be preferable to this fleshly toil? What if his four days away were more than pleasant?
I'm grateful for this question that my old friend Larry Shallenberger planted in me several weeks back. Thomas the Twin expresses something similar with an aside to his fellow disciples, lamenting, "Let's go and join Lazarus." Give up the fight. Just lay down and die.We spend so long fighting against death, but death is inevitable.
Weary from the Fight
As I write this, my 90-year old grandmother − a brilliant woman who has been addled by dementia for too many years − has grown weary of eating, clamped her jaw tight, and has apparently sealed her fate. And a dear friend's mother has been battling cancer and then a heart condition. Infection on her heart is spreading quickly, and though she is under the care of the best clinic in the country, she's simply saying "no" to the surgery that they are urging. She's exhausted, weary from the fight of her life, and ready to rest and be finished with this all. Choosing her path, and reading Psalm 77 to her husband and her children. Heading to her home and its familiar environs to rest in peace.
And why shouldn't she? And how would she feel if four days later she was pulled from her hereafter and clapped on her back and shoved back into her old life?
The Hardest Question
What about Lazarus? We’re constantly conditioned − even in our Scriptures − to choose life. But at some point, isn’t it wiser and more courageous to accept what is inevitable? Do we take away death’s dignity with all of our speechifying against it, all of our begging of God to reverse it, and all of our pulpiteering about what must lie beyond it. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Mike Stavlund writes from a 5-car pile-up at the intersection of his Christian faith and real life. A husband of over 15 years and a father of 4 children, he lives with his wife and 3 daughters in a small house outside Washington, DC. He’s a part of an innovative emergence Christian community called Common Table, a co-conspirator with the Relational Tithe, and a proud part of the collective called Emergent Village. He is the author of the manuscript "Force of Will", and blogs at MikeStavlund.com.
